Crypto is dead. Long live crypto

A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.
On Wednesday, Andreessen Horowitz, the most prominent Silicon Valley venture capital group, made a $4.5 billion bet on what it called a “golden era” for cryptocurrencies, citing “a massive wave of world-class talent” that’s entered the industry in the past year.
“That’s why we decided to go big,” wrote Chris Dixon, a managing partner at the firm.
On the same day, a once-bullish investor made headlines predicting bitcoin could fall to $8,000 from its current level of around $30,000.
“Bitcoin and any cryptocurrency at this point has not really established itself as a credible institutional investment,” Scott Minerd, Guggenheim Partners’ chief investment officer, told Bloomberg News at the World Economic Forum in Davos. “It’s really become the market of a bunch of yahoos and backwaters.”
That’s quite a shift since February last year, when Minerd told CNN’s Julia Chatterly that he could see bitcoin, which at the time was trading around $40,000, eventually soar to as much as “$400,000 to $600,000.”
Bitcoin hit its peak of $69,000 in November. It’s lost more than half its value since then as investors have pulled out of riskier assets in the face of rising interest rates.
Despite the crash, there were several panels about cryptocurrencies and digital money at Davos this year, not to mention a spate of crypto-linked vendors along the town’s famed promenade. But establishment voices at the summit didn’t waste any time disparaging the web3 crowd.
“Bitcoin may be called a coin but it’s not money,” said Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, on Day One of the event. “It’s not a stable store of value.”
So where do we go from here?
It’s easy to watch crypto’s day to day volatility, as well as fringe projects like Terra and Luna enter a “death spiral,” and dismiss the blockchain technology and philosophy underpinning them. But the crypto faithful say that despite its problems, crypto isn’t going away.
For one thing, according to some experts, crypto has to confront its branding problem.
The term cryptocurrency can be misleading, Marcus Sotiriou, an analyst at digital asset brokerage GlobalBlock, told me.
“Ninety-nine percent of cryptocurrencies aren’t trying to be currencies — they’re trying to be assets behind these blockchain networks,” he said. “And I think that it’s only a matter of time before all businesses integrate blockchain in some form of way.”
Calls are growing for closer regulation, especially after the collapse of TerraUSD and its sister coin, Luna, earlier this month. Many advocates support greater oversight, in part because it could help cryptos gain mainstream credibility. There are an estimated 300 million crypto users currently, and Sotiriou says the number is doubling every year — nearly twice the historical rate of internet adoption.
“Even though sentiment is very, very negative at the moment and it all seems all doom and gloom,” he says, “the actual fundamentals of crypto haven’t changed.”

Davos Dispatch

Here’s Julia Horowitz, the lead writer of Before the Bell, with a dispatch from Davos, Switzerland, where she’s reporting on the World Economic Forum.
Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, has a message for tech giants SAP and Cloudflare: Get out of Russia, now.
I spoke to Fedorov on the sidelines of the Davos summit — the first place he’s visited outside Ukraine since Russia invaded three months ago. He was here on a mission to urge business and government leaders to do more to help, and met with leaders from Google, Microsoft and Facebook’s Meta.
“Each of us can do even better,” he said.
Almost 500 tech companies have left Russia since President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, by Fedorov’s count. But he called out tech firms Cloudflare and SAP for continuing to operate in Russia, which he said undermines the effectiveness of the “digital blockade.”
“When a company is working in the Russian market, it pumps funds into the Russian budget from which money gets to the Russian army,” Fedorov said. “This enables killing Ukrainians.”
Germany’s SAP, which makes business software, said in April it planned to exit Russia. But Fedorov said the company is slow-walking its departure and needs to move faster.
“I’m convinced eventually they will leave Russia, sooner or later — but sooner [is better] than later, because people are getting killed,” he said. SAP said in a statement that it’s having “an ongoing dialogue with the Ukrainian government, which included conversations at Davos,” and that it “has stood in solidarity with the Ukrainians since the start of Russia’s unjustified war.”
Cloudflare, meanwhile, has said it is still operating in Russia to protect the flow of uncensored information to Russians.
“They say they allegedly are there to defend some kind of democracy,” Fedorov said.
In a statement, the cloud services operator said it “has minimal sales and commercial activity in Russia” and has “terminated any customers we have identified as tied to sanctioned entities.”
Fedorov emphasized that a “digital blockade” is an important tool to fight back against Russia, since it can set the country back “two or three decades,” encouraging engineers and other specialists to leave.
“We also want people in Russia to understand that ‘Guys, something is wrong.’ And they have to stand up against war,” Fedorov added.

China’s leaders are signaling panic

In an unusual move, China’s cabinet convened an emergency meeting with more than 100,000 participants on Wednesday, according to state media. The agenda: Do whatever it takes to save the economy.
During the unexpected video teleconference, Premier Li Keqiang offered what is perhaps the grimmest assessment yet of the state of the economy from China’s leadership. Li said that in some ways it is in worse shape than it was in 2020, during the initial outbreak of coronavirus, my CNN Business colleague Jessie Yeung writes. He urged leaders across the country to reverse rising unemployment.
Step back: The world’s second-largest economy, which once regularly boasted growth rates of 10% or more, has suffered under its own Covid-19 protocol, which is keeping millions of people under lockdown.
Earlier this week, UBS lowered its full-year GDP growth forecast to 3%. China has said it expects growth of around 5.5% this year.
Sustained growth isn’t merely an economic priority. China’s party leadership have maintained their grip on power in part by engineering growth that has lifted tens of millions of people out of poverty. Leaders are especially sensitive to signs of social unrest that could result from diminishing economic prospects.
Earlier this month, Li, the No. 2 figure in the Communist Party after President Xi Jinping, described the country’s economic conditions as “complex and grave.” Despite the hardships, President Xi has only doubled down on the zero-Covid policy, saying the state would punish anyone who questions it.
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100,000 Chinese officials attend emergency meeting to revive Covid-hit economy

The unexpected video teleconference by the State Council was attended by officials across provincial, city and council levels, according to a report in the government-owned Global Times. High-ranking Chinese officials were also present, including Premier Li Keqiang, who urged authorities to take action in sustaining jobs and reducing unemployment.
The world’s second-largest economy has suffered across various sectors since a Covid wave spread in March, prompting lockdown measures in many major cities — most notably the financial hub Shanghai, where many have been unable to leave their homes or neighborhoods for a month and a half.
Li said that in some aspects, the economic impact seen in March and April has surpassed that of 2020 during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus, according to Global Times. He pointed to several indicators including unemployment rates, lower industrial production and cargo transportation.
The premier has become increasingly vocal about the economic downturn in recent weeks, calling the situation “complex and grave” earlier in May — but Wednesday’s comments may paint the grimmest picture yet.
Investment banks are slashing their forecasts for China’s economy this year. Earlier this week, UBS lowered its full-year GDP growth forecast to 3%, citing risks from Beijing’s strict zero-Covid policy. China has said it expects growth of around 5.5% this year. The world’s second biggest economy reported growth of 8.1% last year, and 2.3% in 2020, the slowest pace in decades.
Covid has hit China's economy harder than expected

33 new economic measures

The teleconference comes after a State Council executive meeting on Monday where authorities unveiled 33 new economic measures, including increasing tax refunds, extending loans to small businesses, and providing emergency loans to the hard-hit aviation industry, according to government-owned news outlet Xinhua.
Several of the 33 policies also ease Covid curbs — such as lifting restrictions on trucks traveling from low-risk areas.
At the Wednesday meeting, Li urged government departments to implement those 33 measures by the end of May. The State Council will send task forces to 12 provinces starting Thursday to oversee the roll-out of these policies, he added, according to Xinhua.
How China's lockdowns are taking a toll on global companiesHow China's lockdowns are taking a toll on global companies
Throughout the pandemic, China has adhered to a strict zero-Covid policy that aims to stamp out all chains of transmission using border controls, mandatory quarantines, mass testing and snap lockdowns.
But this strategy has been challenged by the highly infectious Omicron variant, which surged across the country earlier this year despite authorities racing to lock down districts and inter-provincial borders.
By mid-May, more than 30 cities were under full or partial lockdown, impacting up to 220 million people nationwide, according to CNN’s calculations. For industries ranging from Big Tech to consumer goods, that’s destroying both supply and demand.
Though some of those cities have since opened back up, the impact of that disruption is still being felt, with unemployment surging to the highest level since the initial coronavirus outbreak in early 2020.
Many companies have been forced to suspend operations, including automakers Tesla and Volkswagen. Airbnb is the latest multinational firm to pull out, with the home-sharing company announcing this past week that it would shut down its listings in China.
There isn’t a clear end in sight to the crisis, with authorities still struggling to contain the spread of the virus and top leaders insisting on pushing forward with zero-Covid.
On Monday, the national capital Beijing — which has also seen cases creep up over the last few weeks — saw seven districts put under partial lockdown, affecting nearly 14 million residents. The city’s two largest districts, Chaoyang and Haidian, were included — forcing the closure of all non-essential businesses including shopping malls, gyms and entertainment venues.
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These great HDMI splitters make it easy to mirror content across your home

An HDMI splitter provides the capability to project the same image to multiple screens, which is handy if you’re, say, hosting a big sports viewing party across several TVs or a head-to-head gaming event on dual monitors. In some cases, you still might run out of places in which to plug in your HDMI cables. Fortunately, an HDMI splitter/switch can solve this problem.

So, how does it work? First, the terms splitter and switch tend to be used interchangeably. However, Greg Scott, a Minnesota, MN-based author and cybersecurity professional, says there’s a difference between an HDMI splitter and an HDMI switch.

“An HDMI splitter takes one source input and splits it to feed multiple outputs; this is useful if, say, a monitoring system needs to send output to multiple monitors,” he explains. “An HDMI switch starts with multiple input sources to feed a single output.” A switch essentially gives you more HDMI inputs to flip between (ideal if your TV doesn’t have many), while a splitter mirrors content across multiple screens.

But Scott says splitters and switches can also support multiple inputs and multiple outputs. “For example, a 2 x 2 splitter splits a signal from either source 1 or source 2 to destinations 3 and 4,” he says.  “Or maybe a 2 x 2 switch offers a choice to display content from sources 1 and 2 on either or both destinations 3 and 4.” That’s why some items are called HDMI switches/splitters.

After consulting an expert and scouring the web for a range of popular and well-regarded models, we’ve picked out a variety of great HDMI splitters that will make it easy to mirror content throughout your home.

$29.99 $11.89 at Amazon

The compact OREI HDMI Splitter 1-in-1 is ideal for outputting one source to two different displays. It’s compatible with laptops, Roku, Chromecast, Xbox 360 and Xbox One, PS4 and PS4 Pro and several other sources. The company advises against using cables over 30 feet if you want the best picture – and a USB cable is included. The device can support 4K x 2K resolution at a 30Hz refresh rate. However, it cannot be used to extend monitors and does not extract audio from speakers.

$16.99 $15.89 at Amazon

Avedio Links 1-in-2 Splitter

If you want to project the same image to two different screens (for example, to the TV in the living room, and also the TV in the bedroom), the Avedio Links HDMI Splitter 1-in-2 is an inexpensive way to do it. You can connect your laptop, gaming console, media player, etc., and that image can be displayed on either two TVs, or perhaps one TV and one computer monitor, or one projector and one monitor, or two monitors. However, the same image will be displayed on both output sources as a mirror image. The splitter supports 4K at a 60Hz refresh rate (which is ideal for many TVs, though it won’t take advantage of the smoother 120Hz in newer models). Both a high-speed HDMI cable and USB cable are included.

$21.99 at Amazon

Zettaguard 1 x 2 Splitter

Zettaguard is known for its HDMI switches, but it also makes a variety of splitters including a 1-in-2 splitter, as well as a 1-in-4 splitter. The splitter can support images up to 4K x 2K at 30Hz, and also supports all types of audio – including Dolby Audio. The device includes vents on the side and back to prevent overheating, and can accept images from laptops, video consoles, and Blu-ray players and output them to 2 identical displays. A power adapter is included, but HDMI cables are sold separately.

$19.99 at Amazon

ENBUER 1-in-3 Splitter

The ENBUER 1-in-3 Splitter has one input for laptops, gaming consoles, Blu-ray machines, etc, and can output a mirrored image up to three monitors. The splitter supports 4K x 2K at 30Hz and has a remote control. It includes a power supply, but the HDMI cables are sold separately.

$19.69 $18.39 at Amazon

KELIIYO HDMI 1-in 4 Splitter

If you need 4 input options, the KELIIYO HDMI 1-4 Splitter can support 4K at 30Hz and transmit both video and audio. The splitter can accept laptops, tablets, gaming consoles and other digital devices as the one input source, and then mirror that image to four sources, which can include up to four TVs, computer monitors, and projectors. It includes an AC adapter, but not a HDMI cable.

18.99 at Amazon

MT-VIKI HDMI 1-in-4 Splitter

The MT-VIKI 1-in-4 Splitter is another 1-4 splitter that can be used with computers, laptops, and gaming consoles. It can mirror 4 outputs such as TVs, monitors, and projectors, and supports images up to 4K x 2K at 30Hz. The splitter also transmits audio, complete with Dolby Audio support. You can also use the device to create a cascade of multiple splitters. The HDMI cables are purchased separately.

$41.99 at Amazon

HDMI Matrix 3 x 2 with 3.5mm Audio Output

This HDMI Matrix 3 x 2 provides lots of versatility regarding your connection options – and it even has two 3.5mm audio jacks for speakers or headphones. The matrix can support 4K at 60Hz. Three inputs can be used to connect devices such as laptops, gaming consoles and media players. The two HDMI outputs can go to your TV or projector. You have the option of using matrix mode in which two TVs or monitors display different images, or splitter mode, in which both monitors display the same image. HDMI cables are sold separately.

$675.25 at Amazon

TESmart HDMI Matrix 8 x 8

The granddaddy of switch/splitter combos, the TESmart HDMI Matrix 8 x 8 Switch allows you to connect 8 HD sources to 8 HD displays. And, if you have some old DVI devices, you can use the HDMI-to-DVI adapter to make them compatible. The matrix supports resolutions up to 4K/30Hz. There’s enough room to hold everything from your PC and laptop to video games to your surveillance cameras. You can also use this massive switch as a splitter by setting multiple inputs to go to the same output. HDMI cables are sold separately.

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Podcast: Chris Krebs on why Russia hasn’t launched a major cyber attack on the US—at least not yet

Ep. 491 — Chris Krebs – The Axe Files with David Axelrod – Podcast on CNN Audio

6 AM ET: Uvalde vigil, gunman’s texts, Oklahoma’s controversial bills signed & more

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David Axelrod, the founder and director of the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, brings you The Axe Files, a series of revealing interviews with key figures in the political world. Go beyond the soundbites and get to know some of the most interesting players in politics.

Ep. 491 — Chris Krebs

The Axe Files with David Axelrod

Chris Krebs was a champion pole vaulter and spent time as a scuba instructor before getting into infrastructure risk management. He ended up as the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, a role that put him in former President Trump’s crosshairs as Chris sought to secure the 2020 election infrastructure. He was ultimately fired by the president. Chris joined David to talk about the ever-evolving nature of cybersecurity, working in the Trump administration, threats of Russian cyberattacks to the West and the war in Ukraine, and his concerns that false claims of election fraud are growing—and putting democracy at risk.

May 26, 2022

62 mins

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CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.

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Texas: NRA’s annual meeting starts tomorrow

Angel Garza, the father of Amerie Jo Garza, who was killed in Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, told CNN’s Anderson Cooper this evening that his daughter was trying to help her classmates as the attack was unfolding.

“She was just trying to do the right thing,” he said. “She was just trying to call the cops, that’s all.”

The father noted that his daughter had received a phone for her birthday two weeks ago.

“She just got her phone. She’d been wanting a phone for so long, and we finally got it for her. She just tried to call the police,” he told CNN.

“I just want people to know that she just died trying to save her classmates. She just wanted to save everyone,” he later added.

Garza, who works as a med aide, learned this information while arriving on the scene to help the shooting victims. He stated that two students in the classroom confirmed that she was trying to call police when she got shot.

“One little girl was just covered in blood head-to-toe,” Garza said. “I asked her what was wrong, and she said ‘she was ok.’ She was hysterical saying they shot her best friend. ‘She’s not breathing, and she tried to call the cops.’ I asked her what’s her name and she said, she told me ‘Amerie, she said Amerie.’”

The father described his daughter, calling her “the sweetest little girl.”

“She was the sweetest little girl who did nothing wrong. She listened to her mom and dad. She always brushed her teeth. She was creative. She made things for us. She never got in trouble in school,” he said.

Watch the interview:

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Edible tape invented to stop your burrito from falling apart

London (CNN) — Four US engineering students were brainstorming the perfect invention for their product design course, when lunch inspiration — literally — fell into their laps.

“Erin was eating a burrito and the tortilla opened all over her,” one of the four, Tyler Guarino tells CNN. “It hit her then — this is a problem that we can solve.”

Guarino, Erin Walsh, Marie Eric and Rachel Nie were seniors at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore when they embarked on their mission to create an edible tape that could hold wraps and burritos together last year.

Today, they are proud of their prototype product, dubbed “Tastee Tape.”

Guarino said the team spent months studying “normal tape” and the elements it consists of — a backbone that holds its structure together and an adhesive that makes it stick to surfaces — to try to find their “edible counterparts.”

They had three main criteria for their tape: It needed to be clear and colorless, have no taste and no noticeable texture. After testing various combinations, they hit on the magic recipe, which is also gluten free and suitable for vegans.

Tastee Tape is transparent and colorless.

Tastee Tape is transparent and colorless.

Tyler Guarino

“We tested about 50 different formulations” before finding the winning “Tastee Tape” recipe, Guarino says.

The exact ingredients are a closely guarded secret due to a pending patent application, but the team says everything used is “edible, food safe, GRAS [generally recognized as safe], and are common food ingredients or additives.”

There are three simple steps to using Tastee Tape, Guarino explains. The first is peeling a strip from its waxed paper sheet. Next, is wetting it to activate the tape, before finally, applying it to your tightly wrapped tortilla with pressure.

The team’s current prototype consists of tape strips on wax paper, but they also hope to package it on a roll like ordinary office tape.

On Monday, the team graduated from college with Guarino expressing how Tastee Tape’s journey to date has been “really exciting.”

“We have learned so much about product design, prototyping, and patenting. We are all really grateful that we had this opportunity before we graduated as it has taught us so many valuable skills,” he said, adding that he and teammate Marie Eric would be staying on another year at JHU to complete a Masters’, and in that time, will continue working on the product.

Top image: Tastee Tape dyed blue for visibility. The actual tape is colorless. Credit: Tyler Guarino

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Prices are surging, but Costco and BJ’s rotisserie chicken is still dirt cheap

Despite a 16.4% annual increase in chicken prices rotisserie chickens remain $4.99 at Costco (COST) and BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ). At Sam’s Club they cost a penny less than that. Meijer still sells its rotisserie chicken for $5.99, while Giant Eagle has kept it at $6.99 and Publix at $7.39.
There’s a strategy behind these stores’ decision to keep rotisserie chicken prices steady — and it signals a lot about how grocers are trying to manage inflation while still holding onto their shoppers.
Ikea's restaurants were failing. Then it turned to Swedish meatballs
The rotisserie chicken is a prized item for supermarkets because it pulls customers into stores. Typically, customers will shop around and buy more than just a chicken for dinner when they visit.
Companies want to stay competitive on rotisserie chicken prices and are willing to lose money selling them even as production costs rise. It’s called a “loss leader” for a reason: stores can can raise prices on other goods to make up for these losses.
“Once [customers] are in the store, they can fill out the rest of their basket, which the store might make a higher margin on,” said Ernest Baskin, an associate professor in the department of food marketing at Saint Joseph’s University.
What’s more, shoppers know exactly how much their rotisserie chicken meal costs, and they’ll notice an increase. Like the price of a gallon of milk or a carton of eggs, the price of a rotisserie chicken helps set consumers’ overall perception of a store’s value. Pricing rotisserie chickens incorrectly could have far-reaching consequences.
BJ’s CEO Bob Eddy highlighted the importance of this strategy last week: “We have continued to invest in our value proposition. A good example is our signature rotisserie chicken,” he said during an earnings call, later adding that although BJ’s production costs for rotisserie chickens have surged, the company has held prices firm because it’s “such a meaningful thing to our members.”
At Giant Eagle, too, “our rotisserie chicken is a very popular center of the plate item,” said spokesman Dan Donovan. “We believe it’s important to maintain a strong overall value for this item.”
Perhaps no chain is linked more closely to its rotisserie chickens than Costco, which has priced them at $4.99 for more than a decade — and sold 106 million of them last year. Costco places the chickens at the back of the store, hoping that customers will pick up items on impulse as they pass pallets of merchandise on their way toward the rotisseries.
Keeping rotisserie chicken at $4.99 is such an important strategy for Costco that it built a $450 million poultry processing plant in Nebraska to supply its own birds to stores. The plant, which opened in 2019, processes more than 100 million chickens a year.
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Opinion: Perdue’s loss is good for democracy; Kemp’s win is not

Norman Eisen
But make no mistake. Perdue’s defeat may have been good for democracy, but the winning candidate is hardly its friend.
Perdue was willing to completely debase himself in service to Trump and his “election denier” claims. Perdue flatly declared that the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen.” He announced that he would not, like Kemp, have certified Joe Biden’s Georgia election victory.
Dennis AftergutDennis Aftergut
So yes, the rejection of a candidate whom Trump embraced is good news. Voters also appear to have spurned another so-called “election denier,” Jody Hice, whom Trump endorsed against Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s incumbent secretary of state. Raffensperger, who seems to have dodged a runoff with Hice by about two percentage points in a 52% to 33% victory, was the subject of Trump’s January 2, 2021, demands to “find 11,780 votes.” That was one more than Biden got and so the exact amount Trump needed to win.
Any exuberance must be tempered, however, by the fact that Georgia’s Republican voters also selected US senatorial candidate Herschel Walker, a Trump political creation who has yet to acknowledge Biden’s election victory. Walker was not as big a promoter as Perdue of the “Big Lie,” although Walker has reiterated claims of “serious Election Fraud” and called for a “total cleansing” of America led by Trump and his supporters. Most recently, when an Atlanta-based news outlet’s interviewer confronted Walker about these claims, he insisted that he never heard Trump make such a claim. As the interviewer pointed out, embracing the “Big Lie” is a key step in currying the former president’s favor.
More ill tidings for democracy come with a closer look at Kemp’s record. The fact that he, like Raffensperger, withstood Trump’s pressure campaign and bowed to reality in 2020 does not make Kemp a hero. He simply did the bare minimum required in the end to uphold Georgians’ votes.
Significantly, that came only as Kemp, like a demagogue, simultaneously amplified false election claims. When he formally certified Biden’s win in the state in November 2020, he also called on Raffensperger to conduct an additional audit comparing the signatures on absentee applications to those on ballot envelopes.
Opinion: Mike Pence's big nightOpinion: Mike Pence's big night
He continued to press for such an audit in December 2020, telling Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that a video of workers in Fulton County taking “suitcases of ballots” from under a table raised additional questions. That claim has been thoroughly debunked.
But the dangerous behavior doesn’t stop there.
In March 2021, sitting in front of a portrait of a plantation, he signed into law Senate Bill 202. It suppresses Black votes by capping the number of drop boxes in a county and eliminates the mobile voting trucks that Fulton County used in the last election. The legislation also gives the state Election Board, controlled by the Republican legislature, the power to “reorganize” nonpartisan county election boards by replacing current members to assure GOP majorities on them, as the board has already done in at least six counties.
They include Spalding County, where Black members of the board have been replaced. While SB 202’s GOP advocates claim that it will work to restore trust and “election integrity” moving into this year’s midterms, this restructuring could significantly impact voter access given county election boards’ power over processes such as early-voting plans, polling venues and provisional post-election counts.
Shamefully, SB 202 also prohibits most individuals from giving food or water to would-be voters standing in line for hours to vote. Long lines happened mainly in counties with minority voters in 2020.
It is true, of course, that despite all these hurdles, voters are turning out in strong numbers to vote in person in the primary. But the fact that they are overcoming so many stumbling blocks and still making it to the polls is sign of their tenacity. It says nothing positive about the man who helped erect the barriers.
Opinion: Georgia signals that Trump's days playing kingmaker are over Opinion: Georgia signals that Trump's days playing kingmaker are over
Black Americans should not have to shoulder disproportionate, race-based burdens to exercise the franchise. As a nation, we have seen enough of that for all time.
Kemp’s appalling anti-democracy conduct long precedes this election. Back in December 2016, when Kemp was Georgia’s secretary of state, he accused the Department of Homeland Security of hacking his office’s computers, which contained the “personal information of over 6.5 million Georgians, 800,000 corporate entities and over 500,000 licensed or registered professionals.” An independent investigation, which Kemp acknowledged as valid, debunked the accusation. That August, Georgia had been one of two states to refuse federal assistance to bolster election security after FBI cyber analysts warned of potential breaches.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a New York University School of Law nonpartisan law and policy institute, between 2012 and 2016, Georgia, with Kemp its secretary of state, removed 1.5 million registered voters from the state’s rolls. Then in 2018, as he was running for governor from his secretarial perch against Stacey Abrams, he suspended more than 53,000 voter registration applications — almost 70% from Black Georgians — for containing information that was not an “exact match” to what Georgia’s Department of Driver Services or the Social Security Administration had on file. He was (in our view, rightly) condemned by independent observers.
No need to “work the refs,” as coaches in the sports world do from the sidelines, when you are the ref.
The Abrams campaign accused Kemp of “wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain.” Kemp responded with a dog whistle reminiscent of segregationist officials from the Jim Crow South during the civil rights struggles in the 1960s, stating that “outside agitators” were now disparaging his office.
Then just two days before the November 6 election, Kemp with great fanfare announced that he was investigating the state Democratic party for an alleged “failed” effort to “hack into the state’s voter registration system.” He did not provide evidence of wrongdoing, the party denied any, and the Abrams campaign again called this out as a transparent pre-election ploy. The state ultimately found there was no evidence of his hacking claim and media review of the law enforcement files discredited his account.
Still, as bad as he is, Kemp’s victory is preferable to that of Trump’s “Big Lie” candidate, Perdue. Hard as it is to see the glass as half full, it’s not half empty either. Let’s take small victories where we can find them.
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